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Sermon Index

IN THIS SPECIAL MOMENT

by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 3rd of February 2002

READING

The master and the young monk were walking in the monastery gardens. The young man had practiced zealously, fasting twice as long as the other months, sleeping only 3 hours a night so that he might have more time for meditation. Still he had not had any breakthroughs. He was discouraged. "Tell me, master, what is enlightenment?"

The master pointed, "See that bamboo over there. See how short it is?"

"Yes," the monk replied.

"See that bamboo over there. See how tall it is."

"Yes," the monk replied.

"Just that is enlightenment."

SERMON

Rachel Remen, author of two best selling books, My Grandfather's Blessing and Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes of meeting the Dalai Lama at a reception. She had not been particularly eager to go. She had met so-called "enlightened" people before, and they had seemed no different than anyone else. Still, perhaps this time would be different.

She and her friend arrived at the reception. Several hundred of San Francisco's wealthiest and most powerful people filled the room. Remen had the feeling that people were looking over the shoulders of people they were speaking with to see if anyone richer, more well known might be nearby.

Her friend had brought along several large pictures of the new approach she had developed for working with people with cancer, in hopes of discussing them with the Dalai Lama. She carried the pictures in a string shopping bag. She struggled to get them out, as she moved up in the reception line. Suddenly, her turn came and she was in front of the Dalai Lama himself with the pictures still in the bag. She gave them a final sharp pull, let the bag drop to the floor, and they came free.

Remen writes:

She spoke to His Holiness of this work and they looked at the pictures together. Standing behind her. I had a close view of the interaction. It was completely unhurried, as if they were alone in the room. As their conversation drew to a natural and gracious close, His Holiness smiled. And then he stooped and picked up the string bag at my colleague's feet. In the most seamless way imaginable, he opened it and held it out to her so that she could easily replace the pictures in it.

It is not easy to say why this small gesture had such power. It was not so much what His Holiness had done but the way in which he had done it. In this tiny interaction I felt something purely joyful in him go forward to meet with her in the problem. In that moment getting three large, stiff pictures into a flexible string bag was not her problem or his. It was not even a problem. It was an opportunity to meet. For some inexplicable reason, a place in me that has felt alone and abandoned for all of my life felt deeply comforted, and I had a wildly irrational thought: "This is my friend." In that moment it seemed absolutely true. It still does.

Just that. Just that.

I had a similar experience in seminary. Some of you have heard me talk about a moment that changed my life. A friend of mine was speaking to me about prayer. I was an agnostic or atheist at the time. Prayer was not a topic with which I was comfortable. But in that moment, I had a vision that if I would spend time in silence, opening myself up to what I recognized as an impulse to do good, that it would change my life. I didn't know what to call this. I didn't know how to do this. But I was clear that I wanted to do it.

I took a year's sabbatical at Starr King School for the Ministry, one of our Unitarian Universalist seminaries. Other students suggested that I go speak with Dan O'Hanlon, a Jesuit priest. Father O'Hanlon had studied Buddhist and Sufi mediation practices as well as Christian spirituality. I remember walking into his room. A quite ordinary-looking man sat at a desk. But when he asked me to talk about why I was there, I felt that he was completely present, completely focused on me, open, accepting, loving. I had been a little nervous walking in to see a Catholic priest, but I hadn't thought I was sad. But surrounded by his kindness, I began to cry.

Just that. Just that, I think, is enlightenment. Grasping the whole in a moment. Being present in life. Seeing the essential. Being compassionate. Part of all.

Most of us are not Buddhists. Yet many of us yearn for this feeling of enlightenment. It seems so simple. How hard can it be to see that the bamboo tree is short? To be fully present to each person in a reception line? To a seeker on a spiritual quest? Yet most of us never come close to being fully present even to ourselves. We sit in silence and not two seconds go by without thoughts interrupting that silence. How can we hope to be fully present even to another, let alone to life itself? Dan Wakefield wrote about being assigned to meditate on a tree. He discovered that the tree was overwhelming. The best he could do was a blade of grass.

How can we hope to find enlightenment in this post-September 11 world? It is fine saying, "Just that." But what does enlightenment mean if you catch a glimpse of the television just in time to see an airplane strike a building? Or worse yet, you live in New York City, and you are just getting off of the subway and you see pieces of building falling out of the sky. We're not talking about bamboo here. What does witnessing that kind of reality mean to our daily lives? What does it mean when we don't have enough food to eat? The day we are fired from our job? The day our child dies? On September 11, on September 10, on February 3?

Buddhism tells us that for most of us, being awake, being present to the tree, to the world, does not come naturally. Some of you will remember our reflections on the civil rights movement in January. We spoke of the importance of preparation for the struggle. We need to be mentally ready for the challenges in confronting hatred and oppression. This, too, the Buddha tells us, is part of the path toward enlightenment. We need to practice. We need to prepare. We need to open. It is not another competition, to see who can fast the most stringently, to see who is the most aware. The Buddha himself rejected the path of extreme practices in favor of a middle way.

Most of us have heard of meditation practices in connection with seeking enlightenment. But demanding as a regular spiritual practice is, meditation is only part of answer. Buddhism lays out an eight-fold path that must be followed by those seeking enlightenment. We must first choose the path intentionally. We must strive to stay on the path. We must seek to speak truthfully and charitably. To do that, we must watch our speech to recognize when we stray from those goals. We must watch our conduct as well, acting ethically, avoiding all killing of living beings, theft, lies, addictions, loose sexuality. Whatever our occupation is, it should promote life. These steps work in conjunction with the final two steps, right mindfulness in which we seek to understand ourselves, to be aware of ourselves, for good and for ill; and right concentration, in which we learn in meditation to let go of all the routine demands on us to tap a deeper layer of our being, where the real problems and answers in life lie hidden. Any of these eight steps could be the subject of a sermon, of class, of a lifetime of learning. But Buddhism says that all are required before we can hope to touch the infinite, the eternal.

Just that. Just that.

I am not a Buddhist. I am neither a vegetarian nor a pacifist. But I have sat in meditation and discovered my own monkey mind. I have watched the worries, the desires, that hold me back from becoming one with the impulse to do good, with creation, with compassion, with all that is best in this wonderful, terrible world we inhabit. And that is on a good day, when the sky is blue, and my checkbook is balanced.

We each have a responsibility as Unitarian Universalists to seek our own path, our own enlightenment. It is an awesome challenge. Our faith calls us to the hard way. Not for us to follow blindly even the wisest sage. We choose instead to study and search out from among all the greatest minds, the greatest spirits of the ages, the sacred that will guide our own course, our own path. We seek our own spiritual growth from our direct experience of the holy in prayer, meditation, study, and reflection.

But we come together in community to share our journeys, our stumbles, and our successes. We come together in community to be inspired by others with similar dreams, even if they walk different paths. We come together to learn from those ahead of us on the path. We come together, to remember to start again when we fail. We come together in the middle of a busy week, to join our voices and our hearts, together even as we remain alone with our conscience and our God.

It would be easy to rest where we are. Most of us have already studied and reflected, prayed and worked. But we are not called to rest. We are called to support life and nurture love. We are called to become one. We are called to stand against cruelty, greed, and oppression. We need to become strong. Spiritually strong. The work is waiting.

These are the times that try our souls. Let us prepare our souls that we may be ready. In this moment, this special moment, God is calling us. Let all that is within us respond with joy.